Palouse River, Washington
Migratory bald eagles perched high atop outcrops watched us pass as we explored Palouse River Canyon by Zodiac. These eagles work their way south from as far as the Yukon. Backwater from Lower Monumental Dam reaches into Palouse Canyon where these eagles save their energy by perching for hours on end until they see a fish stir the surface. An immature eagle of the year, not yet adept at snatching fish, pierced the otherwise silent somber canyon with its hunger cries.
Naturalist Linda Burback directed us to a freshly chisel – cut willow tree with a pile of yellow chips about the stump. Beaver are adaptable to a variety of waterways and don't always build dams or conical lodges. On this Palouse backwater their living quarters are in bank burrows with underwater entrances.
The trade in beaver was the initial impetus for the initial exploration of this Pacific Northwest. The beaver fur (felt) hat craze in Europe and demand for its musky glandular secretion (castoreum), used as a perfume base, drove independent trappers (mountain men) and company fur brigades ever further field. French trappers first entered this vast rolling grassland in 1812 and applied their name, La Pelouse, or grassland.
Our Zodiacs also landed us for a bus ride onto the tortured and sculpted highlands above the Palouse River. A series of cataclysmic floods, between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene, shaped this land and formed the 400-foot deep punchbowl into which Palouse River tumbles. The river channel at the lip of the fall bends 90-degrees behind a pinnacled wall. Guests stare at the optical illusion and ask what happened to the river, or, is it coming from underground or a great spring? So we hike to an upriver brink where they look down on the river cascading over rapids into a black defile just above the falls.
Migratory bald eagles perched high atop outcrops watched us pass as we explored Palouse River Canyon by Zodiac. These eagles work their way south from as far as the Yukon. Backwater from Lower Monumental Dam reaches into Palouse Canyon where these eagles save their energy by perching for hours on end until they see a fish stir the surface. An immature eagle of the year, not yet adept at snatching fish, pierced the otherwise silent somber canyon with its hunger cries.
Naturalist Linda Burback directed us to a freshly chisel – cut willow tree with a pile of yellow chips about the stump. Beaver are adaptable to a variety of waterways and don't always build dams or conical lodges. On this Palouse backwater their living quarters are in bank burrows with underwater entrances.
The trade in beaver was the initial impetus for the initial exploration of this Pacific Northwest. The beaver fur (felt) hat craze in Europe and demand for its musky glandular secretion (castoreum), used as a perfume base, drove independent trappers (mountain men) and company fur brigades ever further field. French trappers first entered this vast rolling grassland in 1812 and applied their name, La Pelouse, or grassland.
Our Zodiacs also landed us for a bus ride onto the tortured and sculpted highlands above the Palouse River. A series of cataclysmic floods, between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene, shaped this land and formed the 400-foot deep punchbowl into which Palouse River tumbles. The river channel at the lip of the fall bends 90-degrees behind a pinnacled wall. Guests stare at the optical illusion and ask what happened to the river, or, is it coming from underground or a great spring? So we hike to an upriver brink where they look down on the river cascading over rapids into a black defile just above the falls.
